


An Average Day in the Delta Quadrant

by peacerose47



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Other, Star Trek Friendshipfest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 09:05:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11574864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacerose47/pseuds/peacerose47
Summary: What could possibly go wrong when the Captain and Chief Engineer leave on an away mission together?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cosmic_llin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_llin/gifts).



> This is a bit of a rushed job because I'm a chronic procrastinator, so it's not as good as I'd hoped to make it. The wonderful [Rinari7](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Rinari7/profile) did some beta-reading for me, but I messed with it a little afterwards so any mistakes are on me.

 

At the sound of a throat clearing, Janeway looked up from the PADD in her hands. She looked up, surprised that Commander Chakotay was still there. “Was there something else?” she inquired.

“Sensors detected a nearby system that might be worth investigating. It doesn’t look like anyone’s staked a claim to anything there.”

He handed her a PADD of sensor readings and she scanned it quickly. “There’s nothing remarkable about this system. What do you find so interesting?”

“There might be minerals or vegetation on one of the planets that could be useful.”

“’Might be’. Why are you so keen on exploring this particular system? It’s hardly worth a detour.”

“No, but I was thinking a shuttle could go scout around for a day or two, just in case there’s something the sensors missed.”

“Fine. Put together an away team then.”

“Good. You can report to the shuttle bay tomorrow.” He turned to leave while she processed his words.

“ _Wait just a damn minute_. Me? Was this your plan all along?”

“How long has it been since you left the ship?” He crossed his arms and waited.

Janeway scoffed. “You’re being ridiculous. I left the ship…” She trailed off, racking her brains for an answer.

“I’m not going to let you keep working yourself to death. You need a break, Kathryn. Shuttle bay one, tomorrow morning.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll be there, Mother Hen.”

 

 

Early the next morning, Janeway was sitting in the cockpit of the _Delta Flyer_ , running a pre-flight check on the engines. She was still a little annoyed at Chakotay for manoeuvring her like that, but the more she thought about it, the more she realized it was probably what she needed. Time away from the ship with no responsibility. She could let the computer do all the scanning, prop her feet up on the helm and read one of the books she’d been meaning to get to. Or she could play some music and sing along as loudly as she wanted, with no one there to tell her how bad her voice sounded.

She was just starting to look forward to the trip when the hatch behind her opened and Lieutenant Torres hurried into the shuttle.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “There was some trouble with a misplaced toolbox that had my favorite hyperspanner in it, and then Mendez somehow got his arm stuck in a plasma conduit and…”

“B'Elanna,” Janeway interrupted, “what are you doing here?”

B'Elanna froze, halfway seated behind the small ops console. “I’m here for the away mission,” she said. “Chakotay said you wanted to have a look at a nearby star system and wanted me along for the mission.”

“Oh he did, did he?” She turned back to the helm, wondering what had happened to the loyal, trustworthy XO who never went scheming behind her back. She was going to have a word with him when they got back. “Well, if you’re ready, let’s get this show on the road. Janeway to Bridge. We’re ready to depart.”

_“Acknowledged. We’ll see you in a few days.”_

The shuttle bay door slid open and the _Delta Flyer_ glided out into the vast darkness before them.

  

Silence reigned inside the shuttle. B'Elanna had engrossed herself in a PADD shortly after they had left and did not seem inclined to respond to Janeway’s attempts to start conversation. Kathryn wasn’t sure whether it was her company that was putting B'Elanna off, or whether she just really didn’t like being dragged away from her engines. Their working relationship had become somewhat strained in the last few months, when B'Elanna began to recover from her grief-fuelled depression only to be attacked by a cytoplasmic lifeform which threatened her life, and then Janeway had thrown her lover in the brig for a month. All in all, things had been better.

She sipped her coffee absently, staring at the hypnotic streaks of white light out the front window as she let her mind wander. Making B'Elanna her chief engineer was in many ways one of the best decisions of her entire career. The fiery woman was very much a match for Kathryn’s own stubborn personality, and her scientific and engineering genius lent itself to intense conversations between the two of them about whatever the latest phenomenon was they were studying. She regretted the tension she had caused between them but couldn’t see a way to resolve it when neither she nor B'Elanna were inclined to have a heart-to-heart with anyone, let alone each other.

The console before her beeped an alert and she sat up to look more closely. “We’re approaching the system,” she said. “I’m taking us out of—“

A loud crash somewhere on the outside of the ship drowned the rest of her sentence. The shuttle bucked under the impact, splashing hot coffee onto Janeway’s lap. B'Elanna's console started to beep a warning as the shuttle continued to shudder and shake.

“We’re being hit by… _something_ ,” B'Elanna yelled over the sound of the impacts on the hull.

“Weapons fire?”

“Sensors aren’t detecting any other ships. Sensors aren’t detecting a whole lot of anything; I don’t understand it.”

With a blinding flash, the white streaks outside the window disappeared to be replaced by a dizzying swirl of indistinguishable coloured lights. Janeway’s hands flew over the console, trying desperately to stabilize the shuttle’s attitude as another impact nearly jolted her out of her seat.

“We need to set down,” B'Elanna said. “There’s an L-class planetoid, bearing—“

“I see it. This will get a little bumpy. Hang on.”

The shuttle spiralled towards the glowing planet at breakneck speed. It burst through the atmosphere and careened in a ball of flame towards the surface.

“We can’t land here! The trees are too dense!” B'Elanna shouted.

“Then find me somewhere we _can_ land!” Janeway swore she could hear the wind whistling past the outer hull as they sped towards the hard and unforgiving ground. The thrusters gave a valiant effort at slowing their descent but had little effect. Red lights flashed across the entire helm console. “B'Elanna….”

“Hard to starboard!”

The coffee mug flew off the console, splashed coffee across the wall panel, and clattered down to land on Janeway’s foot. “Lieutenant—“

“Mountain in the way. There’s a canyon, bearing seven-one mark four. If the sensors are working right, that is.”

“We’d better hope they are…”

The fire surrounding them flickered out. The clouds parted before them, and Janeway got her first clear view of the planet below. Green forests stretched out from horizon to horizon, covering hill and valley alike in a velvet blanket. And marring the serenity before them like a dirty smear on the fabric ran a wide, empty canyon. If they angled it right, they could just fit inside.

“Thrusters are at critical,” B'Elanna informed her.

“You better hold together for me,” Kathryn whispered to the tiny vessel, “just for two minutes more.”

The _Flyer_ swooped over the treetops and dipped down towards the canyon. A flutter of startled birds clouded the window for an instant. The vessel held its course. Dust blew up from the canyon floor, stirred up by the thrusters. Another alarm shrilled through the cabin. A loud impact threw them against their consoles. Then the motion ceased, the billowing dust clouds began to settle, and everything was still once again.

The _Delta Flyer_ had landed.

 


	2. Chapter 2

“ _Delta Flyer_ to _Voyager_ , mayday. Do you read me, _Voyager_?” The comm line sizzled with static, but offered no reply. Janeway sighed and leaned back in her seat. “Janeway to Torres. What’s the status of the engines?”

_“Not good. It’ll take me several hours at least to get us up and running again.”_

“I’m having no luck with the shuttle’s comm system either. Do we have any systems that _are_ operational?”

_“I think internal sensors might be working.”_

“Noted.” Janeway pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’ll have to set up a distress beacon and hope that gets through to _Voyager_.”

_“Understood. I’ll still be here.”_ She heard the grim determination in the engineer’s voice as she signed off. She went into the aft compartment, glancing at the open Jeffries tube hatch she passed, and found the distress beacon.

When she opened the shuttle’s external hatch, she was immediately struck by a wave of heat. The air folded around her and suffocated her senses. Her skin began to crawl and she tore at the neck of her undershirt, brushing away the beads of sweat that had begun to gather there.

Just her luck - they had to crash-land in the part of the planet that was in summertime. Wonderful.

She set the beacon on the ground a few paces from the shuttle, and with a few pushes of the buttons, the lights began to flash and glow as the small device beamed its signal toward the heavens. She turned away to return to the welcoming cool embrace of the shuttle’s recycled atmosphere, when the beacon began to beep at her. She crouched beside it to examine the display of lights more closely. “Interference?” she muttered. She looked at the walls of rock surrounding them. “Maybe that’s what’s wrong with the _Flyer’s_ comm.” She returned to the shuttle to retrieve a tricorder and phaser, picked up the beacon and tucked it under her arm, then headed towards the ravine wall.

By the time she reached the top, her hair had begun to stick uncomfortably to her forehead and she felt rivulets of sweat running down every curve of her body. She ripped off her jacket and undershirt and tied them around her waist, pushed her hair back behind her ears, and set up the beacon again. It whirred to life and flashed merrily, then began to beep at her once again.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Kathryn kicked the device, knocking it onto its side. “We’re out of the damn canyon; why won’t you work?” She snapped open her tricorder and scanned for the frequency of the distress signal. “Why are you being reflected back?” she asked the stillness around her. It gave her no answer. “So how can I get you to work?” She glanced around at all the tall, forested slopes nearby and groaned out loud.

“I think I’m beginning to hate hiking.”

Three near-falls and seventeen curse words later, she arrived at the top of the nearest hill. Or was it a mountain? It was tall and it was hard to climb and she was too hot and stressed to care anymore. She set the beacon down and watched as it came to life, then started beeping again. Kathryn groaned. “I can’t get you any higher. Why won’t you work?” She nudged it with her foot. It stubbornly flashed its ‘interference’ warning. She scanned it with the tricorder again. The beacon appeared to be working, and there was no indication of where the interference was coming from.

“Fine,” she sighed, tucking the tricorder back into her belt. She turned back and began to make her way down the slope. Perhaps if she left it, it would begin to work on its own eventually. A watched beacon never transmits, and all that.

She got about halfway down when she stumbled and fell backwards, sliding several meters on her behind before she grabbed hold of a branch of a shrub and halted her rapid descent. She paused a minute to catch her breath. At least under the shade of the trees it was a little bit cooler. She tried to let go of the branch she was holding onto and stand up, but she suddenly found that her hand couldn’t move. She pushed aside the leafy twigs of the shrub and found that a small vine laying next to the bush had reached up and wound itself around her wrist.

She yanked at it. It held tight. She tried to pry it loose, scratching herself in her effort and break its hold.

It seemed to be getting tighter. The vine was beginning to withdraw and it was pulling her up the slope with it. She yanked at it with her free hand, but she could not get loose. She leaned all her weight away from it and pulled, but the plant did not let go. Another vine appeared beside her and caught hold of her right ankle. She tried to stomp on the second vine and tugged on the first one.

And then she saw where they were coming from.

A giant plant she hadn’t seen during her ascent bloomed right above her. Its large fly-trap type head was situated on a bed of large leaves and wriggling vines. Its mouth was open, tensed, waiting for its prey, and Kathryn was not interested in being its lunch.

She batted a vine away from her free hand and pulled the phaser from her belt. The fiery beam hit the creature at the base of its ‘mouth’, but it did not so much as flinch. Kathryn flicked the phaser’s setting up to ‘Kill’. She eyed a vine that was working its way up her trapped leg as she aimed at the creature and fired again. The plant’s mouth snapped shut and several tendrils began to flail around it. She smacked a flailing tentacle away from her face and fired again. The vines let go.

She turned to run away from the creature, but tripped on the vine that was still releasing her foot, and half-stumbled, half-tumbled to the bottom of the hill.

For a long minute, she simply lay there, catching her breath. The sun blinded her from low in the cloudless sky. The rocks beneath her began to dig into her back.

“Well this has been one hell of a day,” she muttered. She half-heartedly tried to blow a lock of hair out of her face. Suddenly something warm and wet splattered onto her hand, and she heard a bird caw overhead. She lifted her hand to glare at the mess and took a deep breath. “Seems about right.”

The sun sank slowly but surely towards the horizon as she limped down to the bottom of the ravine, favouring the ankle that had been caught in the vine. As she approached the shuttle, she noticed the burns and scorches on the hull, and a gaping wound where a jagged piece of the outer hull had been blown off. But something about it seemed odd to her.

She moved slowly in a circle around the shuttlecraft. There were no indentations that looked like impact from meteors. She stopped, staring at the nearest scorch mark. It looked more like damage from weapons fire or some kind of explosion.

Maybe their crash-landing hadn’t been an accident after all. And if that were so, they might not be quite as alone on this planet as they thought. The best thing to do right now would be to help B'Elanna try and repair the engines as quickly as they could so they could get off the planet as soon as possible.

She limped back to the hatch, wondering briefly if she had been careless enough to leave it open like that when she left. “B'Elanna?” she called as she entered. There was no answer. She went into the aft section. The Jeffries tube hatch was still open, so she stuck her head inside. “B'Elanna?” No answer. She limped to where she knew a medkit was stashed and felt around for it. Surely someone wouldn’t have removed it and neglected to replace it. So why couldn’t she find it?

“Computer, locate B'Elanna Torres.”

_“B'Elanna Torres is not onboard.”_

“When did she leave?”

_“Twenty one point seven minutes ago.”_

A nagging suspicion began to worry Kathryn’s mind. “Computer, has anyone else been onboard the _Flyer_ in the last half-hour?”

_“Fourteen unidentified humanoids have been onboard.”_

“Computer, close and seal the external hatch. No one enters without mine or Lieutenant Torres’ authorization.”

_“Acknowledged.”_

Kathryn rubbed her head to ward off the mounting headache. With the sun setting and her tricorder’s range limited, she was going to have a hell of a time trying to find her missing lieutenant.

This day just kept getting worse and worse.

 


	3. Chapter 3

B'Elanna groaned as the fog slowly began to lift from her groggy brain. Kahless, hadn’t she sworn off drinking Romulan Ale after that last incident? So why was her head pounding so much?

She tried to rub at her aching temple, but something was biting into her wrists, holding them behind her back. Forcing her heavy eyelids open, she tried to sit up and see what was preventing her hands from moving. A heavy rope was wound tightly around her wrists, and an identical rope was entwined about her ankles. She tried to kick one of her feet to break the rope, but the bonds held tight.

She tried to manoeuvre herself into a more comfortable position on her side, wincing at the sharp pain that lanced through her skull with her every movement. She licked her dry lips and looked around at her surroundings.

She was in some kind of tent. Golden sunlight lit up one wall of the tent. Several bundles of blankets were piled near the tent’s opening, on top of a large wooden crate.

B'Elanna eyed the crate, wondering if there was any way she might be able to wriggle over there, pry it open and find something to help her escape, when suddenly the flap on the front of the tent was pulled back. Sunlight spilled through the opening and sent blinding pain piercing through her skull.

The man who entered was tall and dishevelled. He was dressed in loose, casual clothes of murky green and brown. He stood over the half-Klingon, blinking at her with his three round, purple eyes.

“I don’t know what you want,” B'Elanna said slowly, “but you’ve got the wrong person. If you let me go, maybe my captain can—“

He snapped out a loud string of gibberish and pulled his hand back as if to strike her. She glanced at her jacket and saw that her combadge had been removed. “So much for diplomacy,” she muttered.

The man crouched down beside her, looking curiously at her. “If you so much as touch me…” she growled. His long, pointed fingers reached out and plucked the rank bar off her collar. The alien turned the piece of shiny metal over in his hand, then stood up and left as abruptly as he had entered.

B'Elanna groaned and let her head flop back on the ground. Today was not shaping up to be a very good day at all.

Darkness fell more quickly than she had expected. Firelight danced now in the camp outside, casting flickering shadows on the wall and floor. As B'Elanna stared at the hypnotic patterns, she wondered where Janeway had gotten to. Had she too been captured by these aliens? Or maybe they had encountered her on their way back and left her somewhere, lying injured or worse among whatever wild animals lurked in the darkness.

“B'Elanna,” a voice hissed near her head. She craned her neck around and saw movement at the back of the tent.

“Captain?”

Janeway crept under the back wall of the tent, the dim light from her tricorder screen the only illumination. “Sorry it took me so long. Are you alright?”

“Fine. Just untie me.”

Janeway’s fingers pried at the knots binding her wrists and the rope began to loosen. B’Elanna rubbed her wrists gratefully as the ties on her ankles fell away. “We need to get out of here,” Janeway whispered urgently. “Can you walk?”

“Do I have a choice?”

The lifted the heavy cloth wall and slipped quietly out into the moonlight beyond. Janeway’s hand gripped B'Elanna’s arm as they moved silently and she felt rather than saw the slight irregularity in her gait as she favored her ankle.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a sudden movement and froze in her tracks. One of the aliens was standing nearby, beyond the tents, facing into the darkness. The scent of urine reached them and B'Elanna wrinkled her nose. Any second he would turn around. Any second he would see them and raise the alarm. And she didn’t want to stick around and find out exactly what their plans for her had been.

The Captain saw him as well and reached slowly towards her belt. In an instant, the fiery beam of a phaser streaked from her hand and felled the shadowy figure. He would never know what hit him.

Behind them, the camp started to rouse.

“What was that?” a gruff voice said loudly.

“Can you run for it?” B'Elanna asked softly.

“Do I have a choice?” Janeway replied.

Clinging tightly to each other’s hands so as not to lose one another in the darkness, they sprinted towards the sheltering shadows of the trees.

Pursuit was not far behind them. The aliens made no attempt at silence or subtlety, crashing through the bushes in search of their runaway captive. The moonlight offered little aid as the two Starfleet officers darted around ghostly trees and over fallen branches. Heavy boughs slapped across B'Elanna's face. She could hear her blood pounding in her ears. Her hand clung to Janeway’s wrist in a death grip as she followed the other woman’s lead. They dashed around a cluster of bushes. A startled avian squawk rang in B'Elanna's ear. Someone shouted behind them.

Then a shot reverberated around them and Janeway fell heavily to the ground.

“Captain!” B'Elanna put Janeway’s arm around her shoulders and helped her stand up. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” Janeway said through tightly clenched teeth. “I just turned my ankle. _Again.”_ They limped forward, hearing their stalkers closing in behind them.

“We can’t outrun them like this,” B'Elanna panted.

Janeway reached for her belt. “Where’s my tricorder?” she whispered. “I dropped it when— “

“It’s too late for that now.” B'Elanna pulled her captain further the steep hillside. “We need to find somewhere to hide.”

She glanced fervently in every direction, analysing every odd-shaped shadow cast by the moonlight above them. Every tree trunk looked like a person looming menacingly over them. Every rock was an ambush waiting to trap them. Her thudding heart felt like it was about to burst through her chest.

They paused to lean against a tree and B'Elanna tried to quiet her breathing while she strained for any sound of their captors nearing.

“B'Elanna.” The Captain pulled her around the tree. “There’s a cave here; if they don’t have tricorders of their own we might be able to hide inside.” With a last backward glance, B'Elanna scrambled to follow her captain into the low tunnel. They lay on the ground, gasping for breath.

The sound of pursuit passed them by.

They lay there in the dark, struggling to even their breathing, silently thanking whatever deity was watching over them that night.

“Well this has been an interesting away mission,” Janeway broke the silence.

“It’s a little more than I signed up for,” B'Elanna admitted. “How’s your ankle?”

She heard rustling movement in the blackness. “It feels a little swollen. I’ll live until we get back to _Voyager_.”

“I suppose those _petaQ_ took all of our medkits.”

“And everything else.”

“Captain, I’m sorry. I should’ve been able to fight them off better, or at least not get myself captured like that. You had to risk yourself to rescue me.”

“It’s hardly your fault, B'Elanna. In case you haven’t noticed, they outnumber us by at least ten to one.”

B'Elanna pulled her knees up to her chest and leaned against the uneven wall of the tunnel. The silence was deafening now that they were alone and in complete darkness. Her head still throbbed, but now that they were still her heart rate was slowing to something approaching normal.

The silence stretched out between them, until Janeway spoke. “B'Elanna, I know that I’ve created something of a wedge between us lately.” B'Elanna scoffed. “I would like to try and repair that, if I can. I know you’ve been mad at me, but I’d like to put everything behind us.”

B’Elanna said nothing. She rubbed her fingers over her bent knees, feeling her nails scratch across the rough fabric.

“You want to know why I’m pissed off at you?” she said abruptly. “When I made it very clear – to the Doctor, to Tom, to everybody I could – that I did NOT want that… that Cardassian _taHqeq_ to touch me, you ignored me and ordered the Doctor to do it anyway!” Her voice resonated around them – a mocking echo to punctuate her accusation.

Kathryn sighed. “You’re still mad at me about that?”

“Yes!” B'Elanna clenched her fists, wishing she could pace in the tiny room. “What gave you the right to violate my wishes like that? Don’t I have a right to refuse medical treatment? Doesn’t agency or consent mean anything anymore?!”

“I was acting in the best interest of the ship and crew,” Kathryn said defensively.

“The ship and crew will survive without me. There are plenty of capable engineers on _Voyager_.” She stopped and took in a deep breath. “What really bothers me is that – however you want to justify it – you care so little about me you would disregard everything I say in favour of your own desires. And that’s what pisses me off.”

Only the sound of their breathing cut the stillness as Torres waited for a response.

“I didn’t order the Doctor to save your life because I don’t care about you,” Kathryn said at last. “I did it because I do care. And I’ve lost a lot of people I care about, but I’m not going to lose you without a fight. We need you, B'Elanna. All of us.”

Time passed slowly as B’Elanna let Janeway’s words echo in her mind. _“We need you.”_ She tried to remember the last time someone had said that to her. Tom might have, once or twice. _“I did it because I care.”_ Touching. But if Janeway’s version of caring for somebody meant ignoring and violating their personal wishes, she wasn’t sure she wanted that.

She ignored the murmured “good night” and lay down facing the wall. The air was stale and the ground was hard, and sleep did not come easily. She lay with her head on her arm, listening to the sound of Janeway’s even breathing. She didn’t like being angry at the Captain, but she didn’t know what else to feel. Anger was a useful emotion when one felt the need to feel something but didn’t know what.

Maybe, though… if Janeway’s version of caring for someone meant bailing them out of uncomfortable situations when they were kidnapped by aliens and tied up in a tent… maybe she could live with it after all.

 


	4. Chapter 4

A low growling invaded B'Elanna's dreams and brought her slowly to consciousness. Her whole body was cramped from being on the hard floor all night and the arm resting under her head was numb. She stretched to work the kinks out of her aching muscles. The growling echoed again around the narrow tunnel. She looked at the Captain, who was blearily opening her eyes, and then looked towards the cave’s entrance.

A small hog with sharp horns and a very angry expression stood at the opening. It growled again.

“I think we’ve outstayed our welcome,” B'Elanna said. The creature backed away, still growling, as the two women crawled warily past it out of the tunnel.

They began to weave their way through the forest, using the golden glow of the rising sun to aid their sense of direction. B'Elanna nearly stumbled into the grasp of another of the carnivorous plants, but Kathryn pulled her out of its reach in time.

When they neared the ravine where they left the shuttle, they were startled by two of the aliens who were coming in the opposite direction. The two women dodged to the side to avoid the phaser blast that came at them, then ran at the aliens and wrestled the weapons out of their hands. B'Elanna beat one of the aliens into unconsciousness, while Kathryn phasered the other. After that they watched cautiously for any movement ahead.

“If they’ve gone back and trashed the shuttle, who knows if it’s still in working order,” B'Elanna said. “We might not be able to get it off the ground.”

“The next time Chakotay tries to get me to leave the ship, I think I’ll just phaser him,” Janeway said. “It’ll save us all a lot of trouble.”

“It hasn’t been that bad,” B'Elanna said sarcastically. “We only got kidnapped, shot at, almost attacked by a wild pig, attacked by carnivorous plants… pretty much an average day in the Delta Quadrant.”

Kathryn laughed. “Regardless of how this has turned out,” she said sincerely, “I’m glad to have spent time with you. In different circumstances, if I hadn’t been your captain, I would have liked to have you as a friend.”

B'Elanna kicked a rock and watched it clatter across the ground. “Who says you can’t do both? Be my captain and my friend.”

“It’s better that I maintain a certain distance from the crew.”

“Better for who?” B'Elanna demanded. “You’ve got a hundred and forty potential friends on _Voyager_ but you’re too stubborn to let them get to know you.”

“The same could be said for you,” Kathryn pointed out. “How many times have I seen you sitting alone in the messhall? Or hiding yourself in engineering instead of going to one of Neelix’s parties?”

“Well, Captain, it looks like we’ve both got some bad habits we need to work on.”

“You know, if you’re going to be my friend from now on, you should probably start calling me Kathryn. At least when we’re off-duty.”

B'Elanna mouthed the name. “I think I could get used to that.”

“Good. And in other news, there’s the canyon.”

They stopped at the top of the ravine and peered down at the shuttle below. Two aliens stood outside, leaning against the hatch. In silent tandem, Kathryn and B'Elanna aimed the alien phasers they held and stunned the two thugs. Then they dashed down the slope and headed for the shuttle.

B'Elanna began tapping at the control panel for the door, entering the authorization that would allow them entry.

“Hurry up!” Kathryn said.

“I’m hurrying.” A phaser fired behind her, then another one and Kathryn slumped to the ground with a groan. B'Elanna turned to look and ducked under the shot that was meant for her. Aiming her own phaser, she stunned the alien that had surprised them. She hit the control panel and the shuttle’s hatch hissed open. She lifted Kathryn’s inert body in her arms, carried her inside, and laid her carefully on the floor.

They needed to get out of here, and fast.

She crawled into the Jeffries tube, wondering how many tools she might be left with after the aliens had looted the shuttle. To her surprise, she found most of the repairs to the engines completed. The Captain had creatively jury-rigged the parts she hadn’t gotten to yet. It wasn’t quite up to Starfleet specs, but it would work, and the rest of the shuttle’s repairs could wait until they were back on _Voyager_. They would be able to make their getaway a lot sooner than she had thought. In fact, she realized, the Captain could have left already if she hadn’t had to go on a rescue mission.

When she returned to the cockpit area, the captain was awake.

“How’s the head?” B'Elanna asked.

“Still attached. What’s our status?”

B'Elanna stood at the helm and started to power the engines. “We should be up and running right about…” The little ship suddenly hummed to life. “…now.”

She moved towards the engineering station while the Captain sat down at the conn. “We won’t be able to go to warp, but we should be able to get off the planet.”

An explosion outside rocked the shuttle. “And not a moment too soon. I don’t want to wait for them to blast their way inside.”

Dust billowed around them as the shuttle lifted off the ground. They crept higher, rising above the angry figures in the canyon. Wisps of clouds began to surround them.

“We’re nearly through the upper atmosphere,” Kathryn said at last.

A loud explosion hit the unshielded hull. “There’s two ships behind us,” B'Elanna reported. “They’re firing torpedoes.”

“I need more power to the thrusters if we want to avoid being hit.”

“Captain, we don’t _have_ any more power!”

“The long-range comm is still offline. I can’t send a distress signal.”

Another explosion spun the shuttle around. “The hull is beginning to buckle. If we have a hull breach with the forcefields offline, the only ship I’ll be engineer for is the Barge of the Dead.”

“Do we have weapons?”

“We’re lucky to have engines!”

The shuttle lurched violently as Janeway attempted to dodge a torpedo. B'Elanna clung to her console as the inertial dampers struggled to keep up with the sudden movement. “We’re going to need a miracle,” Janeway muttered.

“Captain, there’s another--” The loud explosion drowned the rest of her sentence. The hissing of escaping atmosphere was the last thing she heard, as the shuttle was thrown into a somersault and B'Elanna's head hit her console hard.

 

 

 

The sickbay lights greeted her when she finally forced her eyelids open. _We’re on_ Voyager, she realized with relief. She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked over to see Captain Janeway standing over her.

“We’re not dead,” B'Elanna said.

Kathryn chuckled. “No. Apparently Chakotay got worried when we didn’t check in. Those alien vessels were no match for _Voyager_.”

“That’s the last time I’m going on an away mission for a long, long time.” B’Elanna pushed herself up on her arms and paused to let the dizziness pass.

“You know,” Kathryn said, “I’ve got some holodeck time booked for tomorrow. I thought something relaxing and _safe_ would be just the thing. You can join me if you feel up to it.” She stood back as the engineer pushed herself off the biobed. “You did say I should make more of an effort at friendships with the crew; I’d like to start with you.”

B'Elanna considered the offer. “I think I’d like that. But first,” she said, starting for the door, “I would _kill_ for a nice, hot raktajino. And Chakotay’s buying because he’s the one that caused this whole mess in the first place.”

“You’ll get no argument from me.”

 


End file.
